[Tactile-Talk] My Introduction And Remarks From 2024 Science Division Talk

Tue Aug 27 22:38:58 UTC 2024

Hello,
My name is John Miller and I am the moderator of the tactile-talk list.
I look forward to hearing from others about how the blind are using tactile graphic displays either professionally or at play.
I want to thank those who have stepped forward and introduced themselves.
I am a totally blind electrical engineer. At work I have the opportunity to do data visualization. I use a Graphiti tactile graphic display from Orbit Research to review certain datasets.  These days a standard computer monitor has 1920 by 1080 pixels which is many more pixels than any tactile display. Because of the resolution of the tactile display and the small number of pins on a tactile display, we need to be thoughtful in how we examine an image with the display. I would like to hear experiences from sighted colleagues, teachers, and other blind individuals interacting with tactile graphic displays.  Did you have an opportunity to interact with a tactile graphic display just for a few minutes perhaps at a blindness convention? Do you have access to a tactile graphic display while taking a high school or college course? What kind of things have you made sense of while using this technology? Quite a sizeable community subscribed to this list in the last couple of days.  It is my guess that most of us do not currently have access to a tactile graphic display because of the cost.  I greatly benefited from creating my own tactile graphics on paper or what methods came to hand.  I am very thankful for the many volunteers who provided me paper tactile graphics in the past.  If list members wish to discuss how to make a tactile graphic with Swell Paper, on braille paper, or with 3-D modeling on this list, I think that is a fine idea.
Here are some remarks about the Graphiti I shared at the 2024 NFB Science and Engineering Division meeting in Orlando, Florida.

With the help of David Andrews this list Tactile-Talk has been created.
To subscribe to the list send a message to tactile-talk-subscribe at nfbnet.org and leave the subject and body blank.
To post to the list send an e-mail to tactile-talk at nfbnet.org. Please invite others who might be interested to join.
One of the goals of this list is to capture findings and best practices for using  a specific tactile graphic display.
If you are a blind person and have used the Graphiti to help accomplish a particular task please contact me at johnmillerphd at hotmail.com and mention what kind of task Graphiti assisted you in.  I am equally interested in hearing from an educator of the blind, a parent of a blind K-12 student, or a sighted friend who would like to report the kind of activity you have seen a blind person do with the Graphiti that seems easier or different than using speech output, refreshable braille, or hard copy braille graphics only. My request would equally go out to those who have worked with a Monarch tactile Graphic Display from HumanWare. If you feel comfortable, just post some of your experiences to the list and we can all learn from each other.

At the 2024 annual Science Division meeting I shared about how to sign up to the Google group blindgraph.  One of the pieces of data from this resource is a folder of 41 PDF images and corresponding comma delimited CSV files.
In an upcoming update I will also make available the corresponding PNG files suitable for interacting with AI applications.
The files contain plots of sine waves, parabolas, line plots of other algebraic expressions, scatter plots, histograms, block diagrams, blueprints, and other technical figures.
I invite you to review these images with a Graphiti or other tactile graphic display.
Also I invite you to review the PNG files using the Picture Smart AI feature in Jaws for Windows.
With Jaws for Windows make a notation of which version you are using.  I recommend the latest which is currently JAWS 2024.06.121.
How well does each image render for you as a tactile graphic? What additional metadata would help you in reviewing images of this type?

I obtained a Graphiti in September 2023 and have summarized some findings from my experiences with it between that time and June 2024.  The Graphiti has both a HDMI mode and a USB communications mode.  This report describes accessing information with the HDMI mode only.  Using the USB mode is a promising capability that requires additional exploration.
The Graphiti is quiet. It is extremely quiet compared to braille embossers on the market.
It renders a new image in five seconds.  In HDMI mode, the Graphiti constantly updates when something changes on the monitor of my laptop.
When I am typing up code to form a new plot, I toggle the space bar on the Graphiti to stop what I call "image chatter".
This action stops the pins from moving up and down as Graphiti updates an image. Just toggle the space bar on Graphiti again when ready to view a new image that is displaying to your computer monitor.
I participated in a Microsoft Teams meeting with Venkatesh Chari from Orbit Research and a group of researchers from MathWorks who create the product Matlab. The objective of the meeting was to explore the increase of accessibility of STEM for the blind. Venkatesh traveled to the MathWorks office in Massachusetts while I participated remotely from San Diego.  A few days earlier I sent a Matlab script to MathWorks that generated a figure.  During the meeting a Mathworks engineer modified the script forming a modified image.  Because the engineer was using screen sharing in Microsoft Teams and because I was using the Graphiti, I was able to examine the modified graphic in real-time on the Graphiti.  This is just one use case that is very exciting about how the blind can remotely consume graphical data in a new way using tactile graphic displays.

I have had a positive experience reviewing a folder of PNG files using the Graphiti.  The Windows image viewer has an easy to use rotate by 90 degrees feature.  It can be helpful to rotate a crowded axis to the horizontal axis for the Graphiti since it has a larger number of pins in the horizontal direction.  The Graphiti has 60 pins in the horizontal direction and 40 pins in the vertical direction.
The Graphiti contains several different filters for how it processes HDMI data. Selecting one of these filters is achieved by pressing the center of the arrow controls. I believe I selected the 4th filter out of 8 to achieve tactile contrast between red and green lines. The Graphiti permits 5 different tactile heights. Using the particular filter described above, the red line appears as a high tactile line while the green line appears as a medium height tactile line. Using this mode I examined a figure containing a red wide parabola and a green narrow parabola displayed on the same image.
One thing I like about the Graphiti is that your hands can be on the display while it is updating and this does not change the updated image. This can be very helpful for comparing one image to another or for when getting context by zooming in or zooming out of an image. Just as a reminder, the Graphiti has a braille keyboard for issuing graphics commands. I believe zooming out is dot 2 and zooming in is dot 5. I have had good success reviewing a plot of data saved as a PNG file.  I have not had so much luck reviewing this plot once it has been pasted into PowerPoint.
I felt the Graphiti display as a sighted colleague created a smiley face in Paint.
He added funny ears, a mustache, a beard, and a box-shaped hat.
As each feature was drawn, I could see the updated image with Graphiti.  My colleague brought up at random stock images of a car, a stick figure of a person, and a cartoon drawing of a house. Each time I called out the correct name of the rendered drawing. Looking at stock images was a lot of fun but it also felt like I was building a skill in terms of how to make sense of a drawing without any context. Such a skill might be just the thing we tactile graphics readers could use as we interact with more and more tactile graphics.

On the other hand, I was not able to identify a detailed image of a modern spacecraft. Detailed and busy images displayed on the Graphiti often do not make sense to me. Some images may not render well because of their contrast. In this case, all the pins might be raised.
I have used Graphiti regularly to review line plots generated by Matlab from MathWorks.  I also find Graphiti works well in displaying the graphical output from the website www.desmos.com when displaying the graph of an equation.
The HDMI mode has some remaining challenges for tactile viewing.
When a line or object is too close to a desired object, a portion of the desired object can appear erased.
When viewing plots of a function I find it helpful to disable the horizontal axis.  In this case the function is more likely to display in its entirety.  I toggle the horizontal axis on and off to collect the information that I need from the plot.
I observed that a line connecting two boxes in a block diagram can appear erased when the boxes are too close together.
I generated an image in PowerPoint of two boxes connected by a thick line. The Graphiti displayed the image correctly including displaying the connecting line.  As I moved the boxes closer to each other at some point the boxes displayed nicely but the line between them does not display. In addition it takes a little bit of guess and check to learn how thick a line needs to be before it displays nicely.  Similarly small dots on a scatter plot may need to be enlarged before they display well.
There may be some image filtering going on in the HDMI driver itself that impacts how tactile images are displayed.
Learning more about which images display well and when a region of an image displays poorly on a tactile display can help with choices of how to generate the image for best viewing quality.
I find the strength of the Graphiti is examining functions like plots and also examining 2-D data.
I would like to hear about successes and challenges from others.
Very Best,
John
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/tactile-talk_nfbnet.org/attachments/20240827/3418f2eb/attachment-0001.htm>